


The Separation

by foundCarcosa



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-02
Updated: 2011-11-02
Packaged: 2017-10-25 15:40:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/271961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The break is not as clean as either party would like it to be. [Written 20 April 2011]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Separation

Gilbert awoke with a start, and that in itself was telling.  
The unbearable weight of Ivan’s presence, the oppressive anvil on his chest that reminded him of his plight every morning, unfailingly kept him logy and lethargic long into the morning hours. Only after a blisteringly hot shower and a few verbal slaps to the face, delivered in cutting German to a steam-obscured mirror image, could Gilbert begin to feel like something more than the sum of his troubles.

Sliding out from under the covers, gaunt form shivering despite the ever-lit fireplace, the Prussian’s red eyes darted about suspiciously. Everything about the atmosphere was different. He hadn’t felt this alert since…

Never mind that. A shower, first, because protocol and routine were the glue that held Germania’s descendants together. One misstep, and every crumb of sanity that Gilbert had obsessively hoarded these past few decades would evaporate.

Under the sputtering spray, he hung his head as visions of a golden-haired adolescent unfolded in his mind’s eye. Nothing seared more than these images; not the shower, not the flames in the fireplace, not the tears that pricked the corners of his bloodshot eyes nor the inflamed capillaries in his cheeks. He dug nails into taut flesh to keep from coming undone, the reflexive cry of nerve endings drowning out his roiling emotions.

Washed and dressed, Gilbert passed through the rooms of the house like an unwelcome stranger, sticking close to walls and flicking his gaze like a searchlight.

Ivan wasn’t in.  
Except, Ivan was  _always_ in.  
 _This could not be right._

Unexpectedly, fear clamped a vise-like hand around his labouring heart. He moved swiftly now, booted feet sounding hollowly on dull hardwood floors. The portraits on the walls looked on impassively, lifeless eyes staring unblinkingly from gilt frames. Raivis and Toris, Katyusha, Natalia…  _Ludwig had been there too, once, in Ivan’s perverse wall of shame — but the Russian finally got tired of Gilbert breaking his precious frames to free his brother._ Without even the most fleeting of glances towards these unsmiling portraits, the Prussian headed for the door.

Howling winds battered the sense from him, and he stood stupidly for a moment with the door wide open; fat snowflakes sailed past him only to be reduced to mere water droplets when they met the rolling waves of heat.

“Ivan?” The questing call was stolen and tossed away, his tremulous voice useless against the storm’s fury. The vise around Gil’s heart squeezed tighter. Pressing forward with his coat tightly wound around him, snowblind, the fear of the unknown and the yet-to-be-seen made him hallucinate.  _Red stained snow. Crumbling stones. Teeming seas of Germans swelling around him, pushing him down into the snow, trampling him, their cries soaring and their hearts full with the prospect of home—_

“белый принц,” came the soft, hoarse voice. Had it not been right next to his ear, Gilbert would not have heard it over the wind. “белый принц, you are hurting me.”

Gil scrambled to his knees from where he’d fallen. How had he missed the dun-coloured coat, the shock of similarly-hued hair, even in the swirling snow? He opened his mouth to ask incredulous questions, but snow filled it and choked him. Ivan shook his head.

“You are… going to leave soon, da.” It wasn’t a question. The cold that crept into the Prussian’s bones had nothing to do with the snowstorm. He opened his mouth again. Again, Winter silenced him.

“Help me.” Ivan lifted his arms like a child wanting to be carried, and Gil forgot that he didn’t follow direct orders, forgot that Ivan should have been too dense and heavy for him to lift, forgot that his limbs were quickly growing numb and blue and useless.

“You are going to leave me,” the Russian repeated as he was lifted to a sitting position, a voice like ice crackling in Gil’s reddened ear. “Зима tells me. Зима knows…”

“What— what the fuck are you talking about,” and realising he was no longer silenced, Gilbert found he couldn’t stop the words from spilling forth, “I can’t go anywhere, I’m trapped here, I’m your caged fucking bird—”

“When you go,” and Ivan’s breaking voice was the only thing that gave the blubbering Prussian pause, “take me with you. Not like this… but here. Somewhere in here…”

Ivan’s gloved hand found a toggle on Gilbert’s coat, climbed to the one above it, and to the one above it, sliding over until it found the labouring heartbeat behind the wool and serge and linen and flesh.

>  _“When I leave, yeah, when I finally get the fuck out of here, I’m not taking any of this shit with me. All these mindgames and these fucking trinkets you load on me to get me to like you, you sick son of a jackal…”_

Winter’s petulant winds pushed Gilbert back into the snow, away from the incoherently murmuring Russian, and panic at the thought of being buried in white made the albino scramble to his feet like a drowning man kicking for the surface.

>  _“If we had met under different circumstances, would you still pretend to hate me as you do now? Or am I only crazy and sadistic and unlovable because you didn’t get to decide how you came to be here?”_

A glimpse of the Wall lanced through his mind as he stumbled towards the house, and for a moment Gilbert could see through the cold, forbidding stone — straight through to the anxious and pinched face of his brother, gaunt and fretful from all the years, praying silently for his people to have the strength he never had.

>  _“You’re sick, you know that? No, get off me! Get off… get off me… you…”_   
> _“A tear, белый принц? You are crying? Have I hurt you? Tell—”_   
> _“Shut up, you idiot! Don’t you fucking get it? I’m starting to be like you now! You’re making me into you!”_

Gilbert’s visions and Ivan’s words eventually came to fruition.

When Natalia came to console her brother, she found all his sunflowers wilted and ashen, and no matter how many fresh ones she brought, they wouldn’t survive a moment within the walls of the Russian’s home.

Ludwig never asked about the vaguely snowflake-shaped burn mark over Gil’s left pectoral, the one that sometimes flushed fresh and raw and brought stinging tears to the albino’s eyes… and Gil was content never to speak about it.


End file.
